Monthly Archives: February 2013

Ten Thoughts

  1. Accept the fact that some days you’re the pigeon, and some days you’re the statue!
  2. Since it’s the early worm that gets eaten by the bird, sleep late.
  3. Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
  4. Never buy a car you can’t push.
  5. Never put both feet in your mouth at the same time, because then you won’t have a leg to stand on.
  6. Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance.
  7. Birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
  8. Some mistakes are too much fun to make only once.
  9. A truly happy person is one who can enjoy the scenery on a detour.
  10. Save the earth….. It’s the only planet with chocolate!* I THINK !!!!

Foodgate

First we had Horsegate burgers and Twitter was first past the post.

Next came warbler salad:

Dead bird found in Tesco ready washed rocket salad.  You can find a picture here if you are curious.

Then yesterday I found a flouring fly!

Thankfully I had another bag. I will not be complaining to McDougalls because I had already used half the bag of flour a few days ago. There were no flies in the first lot, I would have found them when I sieved it. I eat what I made that day, and lived to tell the tale.

This time I emptied the remainder of the bag onto the scale and immediately saw the added extra. I lifted it out onto the counter in order to take the photo.

Maybe I should have made Fly cakes with it. 😉

Food Monday ~ Bath Buns

We had fun with my Bathing Bath Buns last Saturday.
My quantities made a baker’s dozen (13).

Bath Buns

400g strong white flour
50g caster sugar
125ml milk
75ml warm water
1 x 15ml spoon dried yeast
1 x 5ml spoon salt
50g butter
125g muesli*
2 eggs
Fat for greasing
Beaten egg for glazing
Demerara sugar for sprinkling

Sift about 75g of the flour and 5ml sugar into a large bowl.
Warm the milk until it is hand hot and add the water to the milk and sprinkle on the dried yeast.
Pour the yeast liquid into the flour and sugar and beat well. Leave the bowl in a warm place for 20 minutes.
Sift the remainder of the flour and the salt in a bowl. Rub in the butter.
Add the caster sugar and the muesli.
Beat the egg into the frothy yeast mixture  and add the flour, fat and fruit mixture.
Mix to a very soft dough. Beat with a wooden spoon for three minutes.
Cover the bowl with lightly oiled polythene, a damp tea-towel or a large plate. Leave it in a warm place for 45 minutes or until the dough has almost doubled in size.
Beat the dough again for 1 minute then place 15 ml spoonfuls of the mixture on a greased baking sheet leaving plenty of space between them. Recover and leave in a warm place for 20 minutes or until the buns have almost doubled in size. Then brush each surface of each bun with beaten egg and sprinkle with the Demerara sugar.
Bake at 220°C for 15 -20 minutes.

*My Muesli has raisins, sultanas, dried apricots, dates, papaya, pineapple and sweetened dried banana, mixed oat, wheat and barley flakes.

Strength

A strong woman knows she has strength enough for the journey,
but a woman of strength knows
it is the journey where she will become strong.
~ Author Unknown

You never know how strong you are
Until being strong is the only choice you have.
~ Author Unknown

Photographing the Alphabet ~ C

C ~ Cutlery

Can you tell what they are?

Fish knives and forks. Does anyone use them any more? I have certainly used these.

Since the advent of dishwashers, bone handled cutlery almost gives a Gosford Park or Downton Abbey, feel to a table.

Pastry forks, I must have half a dozen sets.

I love this angle, they look about ready to slide onto the floor. Crash!

I do have dinner and dessert forks as well as serving, soup, dessert & teaspoons, but they did not hold my interest for this post. The carving knife might look well, but would not cut butter. I think I held on to it because I liked the handle.

The centre pickle fork, cheese & butter knives are modern, but the others are all from the home of Jack’s parents. They were married in 1918, when his dad came home from WW1.

Turn

I turned up on time, then sat to wait my turn.

There was no point on dwelling on the fact that my tummy was gurgling for want of food. I would not be long, so all I needed was a little distraction. Out with the blankety- blank notebook and pen…

I had to take a photo of the page when I came home, otherwise you would never believe that I could write!

Just as I decided on my angle for the topic, my name was called. It was time to visit the vampire for the battle with my veins. Soon the fasting bloods were taken and I was hopping back into the car for the drive home and a welcome breakfast. 😀

So what was my eureka moment?

The tune ‘Something Good‘ – from the soundtrack to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s 1965 film ‘The Sound of Music’, was gently playing on the piped stream throughout the public areas of the building.

With apologies to Rodgers & Hammerstein, I began adding my own words to the tune and they suddenly involved turning….

Perhaps I have an empty carton
Perhaps I have a bottle or tin
Yes, somewhere in my kitchen, lurking about
Time to turn them into something good

For here they were, standing there, no good to me
Whether or not they should
So now they’re in the box at my kerbside
On the way to do someone good

Nothing comes from nothing
Something really should
So somewhere in the box at my kerbside
Are items to be turned to good

This will show you how my waste is turned into something good.

It is not all MY waste. HONEST!

Bryson Recycling is owned by the Bryson Charitable Group, one of Northern Ireland’s leading social enterprises. Bryson launched a pilot kerbside box collection service as far back as 2001, it covered 8000 households at that point. The service has been extended significantly, and the company is now providing a box collection service to more than 170,000 households in Northern Ireland.

They have also added a commercial collection service, which is now used by over 600 businesses and schools.

The topic Turn was chosen for us by Will Knott and I hope he has not gone for recycling! 😉 Maybe he will surprise us with one of his clever posts this time. So why not tip toe on over to check out what our other regular contributors have turned up for our pleasure: Delirious, Maxi, Maria/Gaelikaa, Maria SilverFox, Padmum, Ramana, Shackman speaks, The Old Fossil, Will Knott.

Thursday Special ~ Dilemma

The vice-president of a local company had quite a problem. He was told by his boss to lay off one of his employees, either Mary or Jack.

His choice was a tough one because Mary had been a devoted employee for 10 years and Jack was a fine worker who had a family to support.  At night, the VP tossed and turned in his sleep trying to decide which of his employees he would lay off.

Finally he decided, the first one to come to work tomorrow would be the one. Morning finally comes and the VP waits at the office for one of the two employees to arrive.

At 8:55 Mary walks into the office. “I’ve got a difficult decision” the VP says, “I either have to Lay You or Jack off.”

“Oh? jack-off,” Mary says, “I’ve got a headache.”

*

*

I wonder how Mike would deal with this situation, it was he who sent it to me?

What’s happening?

The book of face, as my good friend wisewebwoman, calls it, always has a question at the beginning of our timelines. I suppose it is there to trigger us into writing something about our day or life.

Today the question for me is; What’s happening?

There’ll be cooking, cleaning
And a little day dreaming,
Strolling, gaoling and chatting too
Camera clicking  always looking
Just to find a different view

Sitting, knitting
Sipping and munching,
All the wile my brain cells crunching
Finding an angle to share with you.

Now I wonder if the wool will last…..?

Incoming phone calls

Do you answer calls from blocked/withheld numbers?

This question was the heading of an article from The daily Edge yesterday.

At the stage I read the article there were 36 comments. This is just a small sample of them:

“If its blocked they can leave a voicemail and ill ring them back if I want to lol”

“If they want to remain a private number, well I’ll remain private too by not answering them and it will all stay private”

“I don’t answer them, if someone wants to block their number that’s their tough s**t.”

“If they don’t want you to know who it is, sure why are they ringing you in the first place ?..”

What a cocky sounding bunch of specimens from the privileged ‘ME. ME. ME!’ generation in our world today. Is, what they are doing, SO important; that it cannot wait a couple of minutes? Will the world end if they do not update their facebook timeline or re-tweet that 144 character observation to another 273 people they smugly think follow them?

Maybe you might pause a moment or two, to see the world from my almost sixty six year- old eyes.

I was fortunate to grow up in a household with a Telephone. It was connected in the shortest distance possible from the front door of the house, this was the norm back then. I am talking about the dark days of the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s in Ireland. The dark cold days before central heating or double glazing. Sweeping drafts were common in every other hallway across the land. Most of our neighbours did not have telephones, so they had to walk to the end of the street to a phone box, hoping the phone and light were not damaged, or knock on our door and ask permission to make a call.

We had a phone like this and the receiver weighed a tonne!

I grew up in Dublin, but relations were scattered across the land, some were across the channel in the UK. In order to make a trunk call (long distance) to our relations, it was necessary to dial 10 and ask the telephone operator to connect us. Heavy winter rain often flooded the lines, or workmen digging the roads, cut them by mistake. If the lines were ‘down’, a situation that might not be rectified for days, no calls were possible.

To call the United States, we had to book the call in advance! It was not uncommon to book these calls a couple of days before you wanted them to take place!

There was no way of knowing before lifting the receiver for an incoming call, who was calling, and when you returned from work or an outing you never knew if you had missed calls. Snail mail and telegrams were the other methods of communicating. Letters took a couple of days for delivery and telegrams were only used to bring news of births, marriages or deaths.

The radio, and newspapers that left your hands and anything they touched, black with ink, told us what was happening in the world. With radio, we made our own pictures inside our heads.

We still lived in the shadow of the famine times and the rationing from two world wars, people emigrated and often never returned to our shores. Without great efforts to keep the lines of communication open, some lost contact with family at home.

Today you live in the age of computers, mobile/cell phones, texting, instant messaging and video calling. In an instant you have the technology to see and speak to someone on the other side of the world, almost as if you were in their living room with them. BUT all these means of communication have made you VERY SELFISH!

You seem to expect everyone to be available at your whim, yet complain if they are interrupting you, with horror of horrors a withheld number!

Nowadays there are many reasons for keeping a number as ‘unlisted or withheld’.

A listed phone number can give a stranger your location. I know about eight people on the Indian sub Continent, choosing one of them as a guinea pig,  two clicks on a well known search engine gave me the address and phone number of this chosen friend in India. I did email with the information I found and they were amazed. So amazed, I was asked to explain the moves I made to get the information.

On another occasion I wanted to check the authenticity of someone in the UK. Using the same method, not alone did I discover their location, but also the names and ages of all the occupants in the household!

In my own case I am a widow, living alone with no family within a hundred miles.  I was actually advised to withhold my land line number. This means it is not printed in the telephone directory or shown on any display when making calls. The only time my number is made known, is if I call 999/911 for help. I know this because I have had reason to avail of their services.

In the past, I was harassed on the phone. The calls coincided with my husband driving the car around the corner. With time, I worked out who it was, and quietly changed our phone number and kept it unlisted.

I am on the electoral register, not the edition available to the general public in libraries, or council offices. My name appears in the edition used for electoral purposes only.

Both of these precautions mean that I am seldom troubled by cold calling sales pitches.

I do occasionally have misdialled calls, but I have discovered over the years that if I am abrupt, the caller seldom checks the number before re dialling my number. If I treat the call with humour and courtesy, I am not recalled. So it pays to be patient.

As part of my land line phone package, I can make free calls to numbers in the UK and throughout the island of Ireland and speak for one hour. If I end a call and redial, I can natter on for another hour. My cell phone package only applies to the UK. Another reason to use the phone with the unlisted number.

So, if you’re not in your winter season of life yet… Let me remind you, that it will be here faster than you think. The way you treat others now; may soon be the way others treat you.

Make the effort worthwhile and remember….

Kindness is the real wealth and not pieces of gold or silver.